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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29346411">Staking Claim</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/prototyping/pseuds/prototyping'>prototyping</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Prompt Fic, UST, mild blood kink, quick fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:21:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,227</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29346411</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/prototyping/pseuds/prototyping</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Dimitri a moment to realize he’s laughing again. Chuckling this time, but there’s no humor or mirth in it.</p>
<p>“The time for talk is over, Professor.”</p>
<p>[Written for the Dimileth Hot Flash prompt “blood on hands.”]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>83</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Dimileth Hot Flash</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Staking Claim</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Dimitri.”</p>
<p>He can still smell the tang of blood on her, the filthy stains of slain imperial rats. <em>It doesn’t suit her</em>, he thinks, and he can’t tell whether it’s grief or paranoia that whispers this in his ear.</p>
<p>He doesn’t trust her to his back anymore and he turns towards her voice, just enough to keep her in the corner of his eye. The sight of her face does nothing to soothe his unease. On the contrary, it’s difficult not to squirm under the weight of her unreadable stare.</p>
<p>Is it pity? Or disgust? Concern, or loathing?</p>
<p>“I have nothing to say to you,” he whispers tonelessly.</p>
<p>Byleth looks as though she’s on the balls of her feet, wanting to close the distance, but she refrains. Out of respect? Fear? Or is she biding her time and sizing him up even now, debating whether or not she can thrust a blade into his heart before he can fight back?</p>
<p>She was so quick to dispose of that weakling general, he recalls, just as an enemy of the Empire should be, and yet－<em>and yet</em>－</p>
<p>What’s to say she didn’t kill him to protect imperial secrets? The Empire wouldn’t hesitate to use such tactics. Or what if she did so out of mercy for her comrade, afraid to see him tormented slowly at Dimitri’s hands?</p>
<p>“We need to talk,” she says. With that same hard look in her eyes as when she stole the rat’s life away, a kill that Dimitri rightfully earned.</p>
<p><em>I couldn’t bear to watch</em>, she said.</p>
<p>It takes Dimitri a moment to realize he’s laughing again. Chuckling this time, but there’s no humor or mirth in it.</p>
<p>“The time for talk is over, Professor.”</p>
<p>A test, then.</p>
<p>Her throat feels small in his hand. For all her strength and resilience, she follows his forceful lead and stumbles forward two steps before he can drag her. Either she knows the futility of struggling against him, or she trusts him－she knows he won’t－</p>
<p>“What do you think is stopping me from killing you?” he breathes through gritted teeth. Her pulse is strong beneath his thumb, but it isn’t the familiar frantic thrum of fear. Her hands grip his wrist, too loose to be an escape effort but too tight to indicate she’s about to go for her sword or her dagger. She holds his gaze, something few dare to do.</p>
<p>“You tell me.”</p>
<p>She’s testing <em>him</em> now.</p>
<p>He could tighten his grip for emphasis, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t trust his strength normally, let alone when his mind is this clouded by rage and suspicion. It would be all too easy to snap her neck. He knows this very well.</p>
<p>He smiles at her instead, but it’s as dead as his laugh. “Very little.”</p>
<p>He yanks her closer still, forcing her to catch herself against his chest. Even then, there’s no resistance, no panic, even though he has no doubt she could slip her knife into him if she wanted to, if she moved fast enough. She would have made note of the weaknesses in his armor by now, would know where to hazard a stab in hopes of finding someplace soft and vulnerable.</p>
<p>Even when practically handed the opportunity, Byleth does no such thing.</p>
<p>“I won’t warn you again. Interrupt me like you did today and it will be the last thing you do.”</p>
<p>This close, he can see drops of blood on her cheek, in her hair. Perhaps it belonged to the general in question.</p>
<p>“Would you really have done it?” Her question is soft. Sad. It catches him off guard and his fingers twitch before he recovers with a scowl.</p>
<p>“You must be ignorant of the rumors if I surprised you so.”</p>
<p>“I don’t care what the <em>rumors</em> say. I’m asking you.” Despite her predicament, Byleth’s voice doesn’t waver and her eyes are firm and fearless. “Would you really have made good on those threats?”</p>
<p>This, too, feels like a test, although it’s probably more accurate to say it’s another desperate bid for hope. Even now, after fighting beside him in battle and seeing what he can do, what he leaves behind, she dares to hope.</p>
<p>This is the first time he’s considered Byleth Eisner a fool.</p>
<p>“If it will put your doubt to rest,” he answers coldly, “I’ll prove my honesty in the next battle, and the next. I’ll build a monument of broken corpses just for you, <em>Professor.</em>” He shifts his grip to her jaw, where his fingertips smear those droplets across her skin, nearly black in the shadows.</p>
<p>Beneath his anger and his fear and his distrust, something inside him <em>aches</em> at the sight, hungering for something he can’t name. It wants for itself as much as his trampled pride.</p>
<p>His fingers tangle in her hair to pull her head back. His mouth finds the curve of her jaw, clamping down in a gesture too harsh to be called a kiss. It’s nothing like what he imagined once, in a world far away from this one.</p>
<p>His lips are rough as he sucks the blood from her skin, leaving a bright red mark when he pulls away a second later. “For now, I’ll take back what was mine to spill.”</p>
<p>Ignoring her startled expression, he repeats, this time claiming the small splatter of color beneath her chin. He feels her throat jump beneath his lips, hears her sharp intake of breath, and a selfish part of him is satisfied at having unnerved her－<em>her</em>, his collected and levelheaded professor－even slightly.</p>
<p>It’s another opportunity for her to stab him. Her hands are free, his attention entirely diverted, but it never comes.</p>
<p>He snatches her wrist and bares his teeth against the tender flesh of her forearm, drinking in the scent of her skin before his tongue chases a thin trickle of scarlet up to her elbow. Whether it’s the enemy’s or hers, it’s all the same to him, tasteless in his mouth and leaving his bloodlust as bottomless as it’s always been.</p>
<p>“And if I find that you <em>are</em> an imperial spy－” His words hiss against her throat as he returns to where he started, his hot breath filling the sliver of space between his chapped lips and her thundering pulse. “－<em>I’ll tear you apart</em>.”</p>
<p>When she shudders, he knows this is it. She’s finally convinced of his madness. She fears and hates him for it. She’ll flee from him the second he lets go.</p>
<p>Dimitri <em>knows</em> this－so he doesn’t second-guess the way she leans into him slightly, nor the nearly indistinguishable twitch of her hips against his thigh, to be anything but the impulse to push him away, to put space between the two of them.</p>
<p>He releases her with a quick step back, giving her ample opportunity to recoil, but Byleth remains where she is. That surprises him in itself, but the flush in her face, her heavy breathing, don’t fit the picture of repulsion he painted in his mind’s eye. Her expression is… clouded as she looks at him, and when it clears after a few seconds, she looks confused herself.</p>
<p>She opens her mouth to speak, but Dimitri turns sharply away before he can hear it. If she wants to stew in shock and denial a while longer, it’s none of his concern.</p>
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